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Archive 1Archive 2

older entries

Does the table (with the title Front row seats) at the bottom of the page need to be updated? ChicXulub 17:50, 27 Mar 2004

If you know more dates of opposition to add then by all means go ahead. If the list gets too long it can always be split into its own article somewhere. :) Bryan 03:24, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I added a section comparing images of Saturn from Pioneer 11 in 1979 and Cassini spacecraft in March of this year. I noted that the rings look different on the back sides goes into orbit aroun Saturn. --Tomruen 09:13, 8 May 2004 (UTC)


APOD

Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day calendar article on Rhea links to this Wikipedia article. Congratulations everybody! Fire Star 05:34, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Saturn's Picture

I think the old picture for saturn that is currently displayed on the page should be updated with

the new ones taken by cassini. The puplicaly released photos and captions can be found here: http://ciclops.org/view.php?id=483&flash=1

Requested Move

  • Oppose. I think Saturn Corporation is too significant to permit primary disambiguation. "Saturn car" on Google gets 3 million plus hits. Dragons flight 00:25, August 5, 2005 (UTC)
  • Oppose weakly. It doesn't matter much, but my personal preference would be for a disambig page first and foremost in all cases, if only because it facilitates serendipitous discovery of other meanings by the casual user (more than a leading disambig paragraph does). Urhixidur 12:05, 2005 August 5 (UTC)
  • Support. I think when people search Saturn in Wikipedia, they usually search Saturn the planet, not the car. Of course, I can be wrong.--Jyril 12:48, August 5, 2005 (UTC)
  • Support Google isn't a good yardstick; no one is trying to make money by selling planets on the Internet. —Michael Z. 2005-08-5 20:02 Z
    • This is true, and why there are nearly twice as many hits for saturn+car as for saturn+planet, but it is also true that I actually thought of the car before the planet, which is sad, but serves to indicate that the planet is not the only important usage in this case, at least in my mind. Dragons flight 20:26, August 5, 2005 (UTC)
  • Support. As with other planet names. – AxSkov (T) 07:09, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Support. The Saturn car is practically unknown outside of the US. Vclaw 14:42, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Support as per Vclaw. Pavel Vozenilek 23:35, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Support as per Vclaw. Re: Urhixidur's argument, serendipitous voyages of discovery are best undertaken voluntarily by the user; we should not compel them to go on such a trip. For instance, it is an interesting coincidence that one of the victims of the Mount St. Helens eruption had the name Harry Truman, the same as that of a former President of the United States, but we should still assume that most persons looking up "Harry Truman" want the president and don't necessarily want to take a serendipitous detour to discover the other guy. -- Curps 04:34, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Support per Vclaw and Michael Z. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 17:34, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Oppose I do not see a problem with how things are right now. So what if you have to click on one extra link after typing a query for Saturn? — oo64eva (Alex) (U | T | C) @ 01:45, August 10, 2005 (UTC)

This article has been renamed after the result of a move request.

Moon navigator?

If you look closely at the bottom of the page, there's a Moon Navigator, that is supposed to allow you to navigate from the Saturn page out through all the moons, starting with Pan. While it's a good idea, I think it should be deleted,

#It's duplicated in the Saturn Template, which lists all the moons in orbital order. You can easily do the same navigation from this, if you just look for the current page in that list (it is de-linked and bolded), and click to the link immediately to its right.

  1. It's ugly, and improving its look is time consuming, because each page must be updated (unlike the template system).

I propose that it just be deleted, and possibly a note added to the Saturn template that the moons are in order. JamesHoadley 15:32, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm over it, maybe I'll make a template for it with variables before and after, so its look can be changed more easily, or even incorporate it into the Saturn and its Satellites template. It's kind of cool to follow the moons like that, and other pages have similar nav systems, like the Pioneer program. JamesHoadley 14:44, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Physical data side panel.

The volume given seems to be quite a long way from other values I've encountered, and actually contradicts the maths if you calculate it using the supplied mass and density. It seems self consistant with the Earth comparison next to it, but is different to the values given in the NASA fact sheet linked at the bottom of the article.

I'd edit it myself, but I'm not entirely sure how to...

Mk86 00:27, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Fixed. I did the calculations using density and mass as well as diameters, and they all agree with the NASA fact sheet. JamesHoadley 22:33, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
The value for equatorial surface gravity is inconsistent with the mass and diameter values given. It should be about 10.4 m/s^2. ([1])

Infobox

This infobox needs major shrinking. --SPUI (talk - don't use sorted stub templates!) 05:14, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Horizontal in size or vertical in content? Femto 11:59, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
I'm thinking vertical - much of this would do better in a separate section. Infoboxes are supposed to be short summaries of the subject to give a general idea of what it is, whichg is why they get the upper right "position of honor". --SPUI (talk - don't use sorted stub templates!) 19:28, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
AAAAHH!! The infobox is as long as half the article!!! I think it needs some major vertical shortening, too.--Firehawk1717 17:48, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Magnetosphere?

Could you elaborate more on Saturn's magnetosphere? There are at least two of its attributes I think merit some mention:

1. Since the interior is composed of liquid metallic hydrogen like Jupiter, you would expect the magnetosphere to be large and powerful like Jupiter. However, it is extremely weak--not even detectable from Earth (we did not confirm its existance until the Pioneer 11 mission). 2. The magnetic poles are nearly inline with the geographic poles--the only planet like this in the solar system.

I'm no expert on this subject, or I would edit it myself; I just thought what I read about Saturn's magnetosphere would certainly make an interesting article...

JPL's official Cassini webpage offers more on the subject: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/science/magnetosphere-formation.cfm Bdoggie 05:29, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Editing

I removed a duplicate bit about the Oriental Earth Star from the beginning; it's mentioned in more detail later. I also removed a confused fragment from the rings section; it may have been the remmaint of a longer sentence or so that was cut, but I have no idea what the original was. CFLeon 07:26, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

B-class

It is considered to be a B-class article. Why? NCurse work 21:26, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

I can only guess because the one who added the B class template hasn't commented it. But this article doesn't deserve better. Honestly, this article is in a horrible shape. No proper inline citations; four subheaders for rings that have own article; physical properties, the section which should be the most informative part of the article, is badly incomplete. Heck, physical properties of the rings is about as long! Not a word about Saturn's magnetic field! Not even though it is the magnetic field which is used to measure the planet's rotational period. Then there are headers like "Best viewing of Saturn"... etc.--JyriL talk 00:26, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Moon contradiction

The article on Saturn's moons says there are 56 moons; this article says there are 47; NASA also says there are 47. Someting needs to be done.--Porsche997SBS 02:18, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to add that the German Wikipedia says there are 56 moons and the French Wikipedia says there are 47-50.--Porsche997SBS 02:25, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
Saturn currently has 56 known moons. The discovery of nine more small moons was announced by the Minor Planet Center in June 2006. I would guess that the NASA article just has not been updated yet, after all not just anyone can edit it :) Here is a link to data for all of Saturn's known moons and to the issue of the Minor Planet Electronic Circular that announced the discovery in June --Nebular110 14:32, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
The Jupiter Satellite Page has up-to-date information on the giant planet satellites (despite the name, not just Jupiter's). It is maintained by Scott S. Sheppard, one of the satellite discoverers.--JyriL talk 17:02, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
Okay then, should we change this page or not? I am so if anybody has a good reason for reverting it they should post their good reason here.--Porsche997SBS 23:51, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Visibility Contradiction?

This artical states Saturn is the most distant planet visable to the naked eye but the Uranus article states it is visable to the naked eye. Red1530 00:42, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Uranus happens to be in that awkward place where someone with 20:20 vision could see it from a good vantage point if they really know where to look, but for most people it is too faint. The fact that Uranus isn't commonly seen is shown by the fact it is one of the more modern discoveries whereas Saturn is a big bright thing, easily observed and has been since antiquity. MilleauRekiir 21:56, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Failed GA nomination with invitation to renominate

I would have liked to have awarded the GA to this article. It shows quite a bit of hard work. Unfortunately it needs more line citations and a section has been flagged for cleanup since April. Please provide at least one citation for each section and renominate when ready. Durova 15:28, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Who discovered OBLATENESS ?

Many say that the OBLATENESS of Saturn was first discovered by early moon-mapper Grimaldi, but it seems that no one knows where this was actually first recorded. The oblateness of Saturn was probably the first sighted of any planet. Grimaldi's more senior colleague Riccioli mentions much that Grimaldi assisted him with in his Astronomy books and does mention difference between horizontal and vertical diameters but does any one know details of primary sources.

oblateness query was from -

peter_m_boyd@yahoo.co.uk

Blue Saturn?

In the interest of article veracity, I'm curious who posted the following comment:

Recent images from the Cassini spacecraft show that Saturn's northern hemisphere is changing colors. It now appears a bright blue, similar to Uranus, as can be seen in the image below. This blue color cannot currently be observed from earth, because Saturn's rings are currently blocking its northern hemiphere. One theory is that this shocking color change is a result of colder temperatures, as the shadows cast by Saturn's rings are blocking out sunlight. This would result in the yellow clouds sinking and Saturn's deeper blue atmosphere being revealed.

Does the poster have a citation for this observation? Who has proposed a theory explaining this shocking color change? Cite? Author?

While it is true that the upper limb of the planet appears blue, this is easily explained as scattering by the upper atmosphere that is clearly visible due to the darker surrounding atmosphere. In addition, this blue color is only limited to the limb itself which is in sunlight. Why does the poster imply this effect has occured over the whole northern hemisphere? This same effect is visible in the southern hemisphere limb as well in the posted image, suggesting the blue color is not due to temperature changes.

This is an important atmospheric effect if it is real. But there is a lot about the paragraph above that makes me think otherwise.

--The Astrogeek 16:52, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

If no one claims the paragraph I quote from the article, I'm going to remove it. No one has yet claimed authorship of this dubious material nor have citations or explanations been provided. I'll wait a bit longer and remove it.

The Astrogeek 15:21, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

The quote is a bit overwrought. I would remove the phrase "changing colors", as it is not a time-driven phenomenon but rather the part of Saturn that is shadowed by the rings appears blue. It is not just the limb, but neither is it the entire northern hemisphere, but the part of the northern hemisphere that is in the rings' shadow. I wouldn't call it "shocking", but it is not fully understood as far as I know. None of the images currently in the article show the effect all that well. Better ones are here[2] and here[3]. --BlueMoonlet 17:24, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Hurricane

according the the bbc news ther is a hurricane fixed at the sth pole of saturn. i think this would be importnat to mention because it is the only hurricane ever detected on another body 124.182.131.90 18:23, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

It has already been mentioned in the physical characteristics section. Additionally, it is not a hurricane nor is it the first cyclone-like storm observed on another planet. It is called hurricane-like because it has some similar characteristics such as a well defined eyewall. Cheers.--Burzum 19:03, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
sorry. i missed that section. Eevo 20:50, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Rotational behavior

The cause of the change is unknown — however, it is thought that this is due to a movement of the radio source to a different latitude inside Saturn, with a different rotational period, rather than an actual change in Saturn's rotation.

This assessment is not right for 2 reasons :

1- The radio sources are in the magnetosphere and not inside Saturn as stated in the sentence. The radio emissions are produced through wave-particle interactions above the polar regions (1 to 3 Saturn radii above the surface)

2- The idea that some "slippage" occurs in Saturn's interior, leading to apparent change in the radio period when the source latitude changes, is one interpretation among others, and I have to admit that it is not the most popular among the specialists. Unfortunately, the two researchers cited in the nasa page are the two main promoters of this interpretation.

I have already written some lines about this in the french wikipedia article about Cassini-Huygens. Here is a translation :

The determination of a planet's sidereal period is essential to study any physical processes associated to that planet, as this period is use to define its longitudinal coordinate system. In the case of the terrestrial planets, observing the rotation the the surface gives the sideral period. The case of the giant planets is more tricky as we can only observe the rotation rate of the highest layers of the atmospere. The rotating core is indeed deeply buried in the middle of the planet. The only phenomenon directly linked to the rotation of the core that can be observed out of the planet, is its magnetic field. The modulations induced by the magnetic field rotation on the natural planetary radio emissions is thus used as a proxy to measure the sidereal rotation period of the planet.
In the case of Jupiter, the sidereal period as been measured this way. The sidereal period has been determined with a great accuracy: 9h 55m 29.68s ± 0.08s (0.0001% accuracy) [1]. In the case of Saturn, the sidereal period was determined first with the Voyager radio data: 10h 39m et 24s (with a 0.02% relative accuracy)[2]. Using Ulysses radio data, scientists showed in 2000 that the radio period of Saturn had changed since the Voyager era[3]. These new measurements were showing periodicities 1% longer than the Voyager ones. The radio measurements obtained with the Cassini/RPWS/HFR instrument confirms the variation of the apparent radio period. Observations conducted during the 3 first years of operation around Saturn (2004-2006) seem to show that the apparent period is slowly varying (a few percents per year).
As the rotation rate of the internal core is very unlikely to vary, the scientists are trying to find a new way of interpreting the the radio modulations.What do we know about this radio emissions ? They are mainly emitted on the dayside of the magnetosphere of Saturn[4] and are strongly correlated with the solar wind dynamic pressure[5]. Several interpretations are under consideration:

  • seasonal effect: the elevation of the Sun over the ring plane may modify the density of free electrons on top of the rings. This interpretation qualitatively fits to the variation of the observed period, but there is no explanation for the link between the 2 phenomena.
  • solar cycle effect: the properties of the interplanetary medium and the solar wind are varying depending on the solar activity. It has been shown that the auroral radio emissions of Saturn are strongly correlated to the solar wind parameters.
  • beating effect[6]: non random fluctuations of the longitudinal location of the radio active region. Simulations showed that it is easy to obtain apparent radio periods shifted from the sidereal period with such fluctuations.
  • convection system in the core of Saturn: theory inspired by the Sun interior dynamics, but very unlikely to be applicable to Saturn.

None of these explanations really describe the observed variabilities, nor provide a way to derive the real sidereal period of Saturn.
The problem of the Saturnian sidereal period definition remains unsolved. It is particularly problematic for the atmospheric science at Saturn: if the measured radio period is actually 1% longer than the one measured at Voyager, all the atmosphere is super-rotating (i.e. rotating faster than the planet core), which is difficult to explane.

Feel free to correct my messy english before including any part of the text in the article.

Bapts 17:05, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Infobox

There is a discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Astronomical_objects#Planet_infobox_conventions_.28km_vs._AU_vs._miles.29 on standardizing the planet infoboxes, as well as the possibility of changing the planet diameter to radius. If you care about these things, let your opinion be heard there. Lunokhod 10:11, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

What's with the bottom of this page?

It ends then goes on for a while with tons of white space because there's a Saturn symbol at the bottom that can't be removed. Is there any way to fix this? FireSpike Editor Review! 00:45, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Planet's Distance From the Sun

I really think that we should show how far the planets are from the sun, when people do their reports, they will want it, and they are tired of wandering around Google and Yahoo! typing in different keywords to try to find out. I think someone should go and add the information about how far a planet is from the sun. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Aceboy222 (talk • contribs) 02:51, 11 December 2006 (UTC).

The information is provided. Here it is referred to as the semi-major axis, which is half of the long axis of an ellipse. It is also the average of the minimum and maximum distances, the perihelion and aphelion. Saros136 03:16, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

I think that you guys should also put in the information of the rotation period too.( how long it takes for a planet to go around once on its own axis)

Actually, that's already in the infobox. See "Rotation Period" in the physical characteristics section. It's 0.449 375 days, or 10 hours, 47 min, and 6 seconds. siafu 15:20, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Query on Images from NASA

Under what copyright should they be uploaded? There's this new photo of Saturn from satellite Cassini released by NASA on March 1, 2007. Is it free under US laws, fair use or what? Berserkerz Crit 11:55, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Public domain. Add them in, they are good for the article. 65.40.195.176 06:12, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
Public domain with proper attribution. Not giving attribution or giving false attribution is verboten. Michaelbusch 08:15, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
Ok I've added it, feel free to relocate the picture where it is appropriate. Berserkerz Crit 08:20, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Telesto cropped?

Am I just missing it, or is Telesto cropped off the image, since it says it is at the top, but I am not seeing it, I figure cropping is the likely reason. CodeCarpenter 02:33, 15 March 2007 (UTC)


small remark, hubble on earth??

. This atmosphere, despite being extremely sparse, was detected from Earth by the Hubble Space Telescope. [18]

I always thought the hubble was orbiting earth, so technically it was detected from space no?

Question

How long is a full day on Saturn? -- User:Atomic Religione

Suggested reasons for the hexagonal shape of the north pole storm?

In reading about the hexagonal storm at Saturn's north pole today, both here and in the paper, it occured to me that this article is begging the obvious question of explaining why the storm is hexagonal. I think it would greatly improve that part of the article if a brief explanation of plausible reasons why scientists think the storm is shaped that way. The linked abstracts used for references aren't freely accessible so I can't tell if they talk about that subject in detail and could be used for further citation. Or, if there are as yet no good explanations for the storm, then the article should mention that fact.

So either present some possible explanations, or present references indicating that scientists are really stumped on the explanation. Dugwiki 21:09, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

To follow up, Mac Aavis posted an article describing a very likely sounding explanation for the hexagonal structure. A May 19 2006 Nature article describes a simple experiment that demonstrates how rapidly spinning fluid in a cylindrical bucket forms various polygonal shapes as the water recedes from the center. The shapes change according to the speed of the rotation, with a hexagonal shape at the center appearing at the highest settings the experimenters tested. While this might not be the underlying physical mechanism that's shaping the eye of the storm on Saturn, it seems like a very plausible one. Dugwiki 22:36, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

GA review (see here for criteria)
  1. It is reasonably well written.
    a (prose): b (MoS):
  2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.
    a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):
  3. It is broad in its coverage.
    a (major aspects): b (focused):
  4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.
    a (fair representation): b (all significant views):
  5. It is stable.
  6. It contains images, where possible, to illustrate the topic.
    a (tagged and captioned): b lack of images (does not in itself exclude GA): c (non-free images have fair use rationales):
  7. Overall:
    a Pass/Fail:

An excellent, comprehension article on the subject. For further development and possible FA, I would suggest: 1) Make the prose "brilliant." 2) Add a bibliography or further reading, in addition to the inline citations. 3) Give an even amount of citations for each section; for FA, almost every paragraph or uncertain place needs a citation. King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 18:42, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Added the Further reading section. Feel free to expand. -Sarfa 00:33, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Rings Future

im just curious. it says the rings have places with different densities (some are questionable moons), this is no doubt due to the particles gravitational force acting on each other, so does this mean that in the distante future (millions of years) the rings gravitational force could eventually cause parts of the rings to 'clump' together to form a moon, or several moons? obvuasly disipating the rings so they are no longer there. For instance there is already gaps containing little moonlets like Pan is ther any evidance to support that this moon was formed by the particles in the rings gravitating together, and if so it would mean that over time the moon would expand, disipating the rings further. And as it says in the article some parts of the rings are slightly effected by the gravitational force of other moons. Could this be forming much like the creation of our solar system, as the rings gravitate into several moons, each at different distances away from saturn......so does this theory stand? and if so is it worth mentioning this possibility in the article? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Special:Contributions/phill (talk) 14:44, 3 April 2007 (UTC).


maby.... but the rings are actually (in some places) being held in place by the moons. And, opposite to what you said, moonlets like pan and Enceladus are feeding the rings, parts of them are breaking off, or being blasted into the rings by impacts from comets, volcanic eruptions etc... rather than forming together from particles in the rings. in fact, the rings could increase in size, and the moons be depleted.--Infinitive definition 12:34, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Hexagon Context

By my calculations, the area of the hex is 494,777,634 km². This makes it almost exactly (97%) the size as the surface area of the Earth, which is 510,065,600 km². A pretty inetresting coincidence, and something that gives a context to the hex's size. Any opposition to the addtion of this tidbit? (Anyone want to double check my math?) Dracogen 17:55, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Qui tacet consentire videtur. Context passage added. Dracogen 19:17, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Page protection

Due to the high volume of IP vandalism to this article, I've requested and was granted Semi-protection for a period of two weeks. See the request here. --LaraLoveTalk/Contribs 04:59, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Saturn clouds image

For those interested, there's a (IMO) truly superb, contrast-enhanced image of Saturn's cloud structure on the Cassini-Huygens site. — RJH (talk) 16:54, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Saturn's Future

Should I make a section explaining what scientists think will happen to the Saturn ring system? *(They think the rings will disappear in about 300-400 Million years' time)* Spark Moon 04:51, 2 June 2007 (UTC)


Saturn's vortex

The article says that the warm polar vortex is the only one like it in the solar system. However, according to the European Space Agency there are vortices at both poles of Venus. I submit that the article should be changed to reflect this

Cronus or Chronos?

Our articles seem to be confused; was Saturn originally identified as Cronus or Chronos? I had always thought the former... 64.126.24.12 15:09, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

If there is a decent online source for Greek myth, then Greek mythology link is it. According to them, there appears to have been some classical fusions of Kronos and Chronos, but on the whole the two gods appear to have been distinct. Serendipodous 09:00, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Composition of Saturn's Rings

The article says the rings are made of silicon dioxide, iron oxide and ice, but there is no source to verify that. The only info I can find in the internet says it is made of water ice and rock. Could someone please give a source that explains the chemical composition of the rings? Thank you. RaNdOm26 12:20, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Google scholar has a number of articles on the composition of Saturn's rings. this article, published in 2002, gives the composition of the rings as 93 percent water ice with tholin impurities and 7 percent amorphous carbon,which seems pretty comprehensive. This article gives some info on the distribution of material in the rings. Serendipodous 09:08, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Congratulations!

Congratulations! With a couple of weeks of work, I have gotten this article promoted to Featured Status, as seen here. Universe=atomTalk•Contributions 11:39, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Atmospheres of giant planets

The data in the infobox relating to the atmosphere (surface temperature, pressure, atmospheric composition) are currently unreferenced and vague. For example, what depth are we talking about here anyway? this NASA fact sheet appears to have good data, and, best of all, similar data are probably consistently given in the related data sheets for the other giant planets. I suggest that we should amend the current unreferenced atmospheric data for all the giant planets according to these data sheets. Deuar 18:23, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Archive Created

I've taken the liberty of creating an archive of the old discusssions, as this page was getting a bit lengthy. I don't believe that there were any active discussions in the material that I archived, but if there was, please accept my apologies and feel free to revive it. Thanks! -Sarfa 21:16, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Imperial values of measurements

I recently removed imperial units from the infobox and various places in the Saturn article because this is a scientific article and imperial units are not used or recommended. Deuar reverted my edit and I wish to contest that.

Having miles in the infobox is cluttering and useless. Astronomical Units (AU) are useful and provide a sense of scale as well as being used by astronomers. The mile values are so big as to provide no sense of scale apart from "big". And if someone needed an exact figure they would use the km value in any calculations. Under MOSNUM Scientific articles are recommended to be SI. I propose these values are useless and cluttering and that they be removed.

I'd be interested in others' feedback. Jim77742 08:04, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Deuar probably reinstated them because they are present in all other planetary articles. However I think the solution is to remove them from all pages.Ruslik 09:05, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
Yes, exactly, I'm all for getting rid of them just that it looked like they were being removed from one or two random planets. Lets remove them from all the planet and dwarf planet infoboxes, however, we should also be prepared for loud protests, especially once Earth is touched. Deuar 10:14, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm glad you agree. I've actually been working backwards from Pluto and have got to Saturn and this was the first issue. I shall keep going... Jim77742 13:18, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

I'd support removing them... it's a personal bias, I'll admit, given that I use the metric system, but I also agree with the guideline and the idea of reducing the extra detail in the infobox. (It's too bad there isn't a Wikipedia "unit preference" coding option - as with dates - as that would help address the concerns of non-SI users.) --Ckatzchatspy 16:58, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

After blundering around in the MediaWiki software development pages, I found the list of current bugs and feature requests (inside another system called Bugzilla). It turns out that "bug" (really request) number 235 for MediaWiki is for "auto conversion of units". The comments there have a discussion of possible markup syntax and challenges to implementing such a feature in the parser (precision, etc.). One of the comments notes that some version of "auto magic" unit conversion should someday be available as part of the "Semantic MediaWiki" extension to MediaWiki. Some related syntax is discussed in the SMW documentation, but it isn't clear to me whether it is currently implemented or only under consideration. A version of SMW was released in December, but apparently does NOT include this feature. And I don't know if/where SMW is deployed currently. But definitely something to watch. Rep07 (talk) 20:12, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Internal Structure

This article refers to the internal structure of Saturn as "having a small rocky core surrounded mostly by hydrogen and helium" and being similar to that of Jupiter. But, upon reading the Jupiter article, it states that the core of the planet is under debate (as in having a core, or not). Should this article speak of Saturn's core without a grain of doubt, or should it be more like Jupiter's article? Just a thought. — cosmotron ( talk | contribs ) 18:02, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Suggestion

I would prefer:

Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun. Along with the planets Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune, it is classified as a gas giant (also known as a Jovian planet, after the planet Jupiter).It is the second largest planet in the Solar System, after Jupiter.

We should try to avoid trivial information in the first line. Reply awaited. Luxurious.gaurav 14:09, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Vandalism Found

Has anyone noticed the 'dununununu batman!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1' in the image caption? 206.213.191.166 (talk) 18:09, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I believe it's been removed. · AndonicO Talk 21:55, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Incorrect Data

I mentioned it on the main main page but it has now been removed.

In the data box it is stated that the orbital period of Saturn is 10832.327 days. I do not belive this to be correct. On other websites including NASA, they say it is 10759.0 10759.5 or even 10759.21. Now I can understand these slight variances, but on here they are saying that NASA is 73 days out. Could someone please check it out, because I dont like editing other peoples stuff. Maybe the 10832.327 is right and the 10759 is just an older obsolete measurement, I dont know, but I would like it clarified otherwise I will edit it!

This also brings into question the accuracy of the other data too, which I have not checked. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.7.210.234 (talk) 20:18, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for checking. The figure is correct, given the osculating elements at J2000, which I have confirmed. Saros136 (talk) 23:07, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Vandalism

this page has been vandalized by someone. See the fist few paragraphs.

might want to fix that. K8cpa (talk) 08:11, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Day of the Week

Uh...I'm pretty sure Saturday gets its name from the god Saturn, not the planet. Not going to edit, because I could be wrong, but I think it's a pretty safe bet. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.208.120.38 (talk) 12:54, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

I logged in to make the same point myself - this needs correcting - I propose we just remove it completely as the origin of Saturday should be covered in the article about the God not the planet. --Bobgateaux (talk) 19:11, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
See this [4], the implication being that the use of the planet in the day name predated the use of Saturn as the name of a god. I'd wait for a reliable source before removing it. Can't vouch for that source, incidentally, but I knew of this theory and thought it worth mentioning that the Saturn connection is not just in western cultures. Bazzargh (talk) 20:04, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
Ok I take that back. Having read the various pages on Days of the Week, Cronus, etc it seems opinion is that the Romans simply translated the weekday names, and planetary identifications, from the gods rather than the other way round; but it was the planet-weekday identifications that spread across other cultures. Bazzargh (talk) 20:24, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
I don't know if this will be helpful, but this website, http://www.nineplanets.org/saturn.html, says that the day of the week is from the Greek god Saturn.Lemonhead112 (talk) 16:45, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

blue or gold disc

In recent images from the Cassini spacecraft, Saturn's northern hemisphere appears a bright blue, similar to Uranus, as can be seen in the image below. This blue color cannot currently be observed from Earth, because Saturn's rings are currently blocking its northern hemisphere. The color is most likely caused by Rayleigh scattering.

From what I've learnt I thought Saturn looks blue not gold, perhaps the rings distort when spacecraft take images to make the planet appear yellow to orange colours. The sky is like blue-purple so what's a Rayliegh scattering?--Freewayguy What's up? 00:02, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

"Wet Lake" on Saturn

I saw this interesting but suspicious headline on ABC News: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/popup?id=3731241

Does anyone know what they are actually talking about? How could there possibly be a liquid lake on Saturn? --210.172.229.198 (talk) 05:41, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Those appear to be images of one of the lakes of Titan. The images were used to confirm the presence of liquid ethane/methane in the lakes back in July. ABC just dropped the ball on the blurb. DoktorDec (talk) 17:34, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
Yeah, that's definitely Titan. It's talking about Ontario Lacus. --Patteroast (talk) 18:21, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Adjective form

The form "Cronian", after "Cronos", is used occasionally at least in the magnetospheric community, even once on this page (without capitalization), yet there is no mentioning of it. It may be archaic, and its use should perhaps not be encouraged, but shouldn't it be mentioned? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.226.135.120 (talk) 05:21, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Mysterious aurora, mighty storms on Saturn

http://news.cnet.com/2300-11397_3-6247715-1.html

"We've never seen an aurora like this elsewhere," said Tom Stallard, a scientist working with Cassini data at the University of Leicester, England.

J. D. Redding 05:03, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Information

Ok I am not a scientist - I am a kid searching your site for information for my research reports and yes your site helped alot but how am I suppost to know what "Equatorial raduis 60,288 x 4 km[4][5] 9.4492 earths" means? I mean come on! Help us out here! Thanks, Vic —Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.59.242.159 (talk) 02:58, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

A really late reply, but for the point of posterity, it actually reads "Equatorial radius 60,288 +- 4 km[4][5] [linebreak] 9.4492 earths", which translates as "The radius of Saturn at its equator is equal to 60,280km. That figure may be 4 kilometres too large, 4 kilometres too small, or somewhere in between. That equates to a radius 9.4492 times greater than that of the Earth. References 4 and 5 back that fact up." - Jarry1250 (t, c) 15:31, 16 February 2009 (UTC)



-apple sause-Insert non-formatted text here —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.189.216.106 (talk) 00:23, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

wikipeda does wonders

read what the title says that is mosly all i have to say —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.60.142.247 (talk) 23:22, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

what color? SUP RAV

Pronunciation

Iapetus [aɪˈæpɨtəs]??! Having some language knowledge I would normally puke, but instead I cannot avoid wondering if there's some brain or mouth damage that is caused by having English as a native language. Do you have some trouble saying [iːˈʌpetus] (ee-'up-eh-toos)? Any European, Indian, Turk, Arab whatever could say that, except possibly those with English as a native language. ... said: Rursus (bork²) 19:49, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

New Moon Found

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/media/cassini-20090303.html

61st moon found by Cassini near G ring —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tbarklow (talk • contribs) 04:12, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

[[wuu:土星]]

Will do. kwami (talk) 20:43, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Reference issue

Per the the current wind article FAC, the Calvin Hamilton source used within this article regarding Saturn's winds may not pass the primary/original reference test for wikipedia. Just passing it along. Thegreatdr (talk) 17:25, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

shorter day

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25856248-23109,00.html 

A DAY on Saturn is pretty short, and it just got shorter.

The time it takes the ringed behemoth to complete a spin on its axis has just been calculated by astrophysicists at 10 hours, 34 minutes and 13 seconds, more than five minutes shorter than previous estimates.

A planet comprising clouds of gas driven by layers of mighty jetstreams, Saturn has no lasting visual landmarks as a rocky planet does, and this lack makes it hard to measure the planet's rotation.

As a result, astronomers have traditionally based their calculations on Saturn's magnetic field. But this signal can fluctuate and does not accurately measure how fast the planet's deep interior is rotating.

An international team led by scientists from Oxford University and the University of Louisville, Kentucky, used a different technique based on infrared images taken by the US spacecraft Cassini orbiting Saturn.

Their paper is released today by Nature, the British-based science journal.


"We realised that we could combine information on what was visible on the surface of Saturn with Cassini's infrared data about the planet's deep interior and build a three-dimensional map of Saturn's winds," said Oxford professor Peter Read.

"With this map, we were able to track how large waves and eddies develop in the atmosphere and from this come up with a new estimate for the underlying rotation of the planet."

Prof Read said that a "day" which had shortened by five minutes was a bigger deal than one might think.

"It implies that some of our previous estimates of wind speeds may be out by more than 160 miles (250 kilometres) per hour," he said.

"It also means that the weather patterns on Saturn are much more like those we observe on Jupiter, suggesting that, despite their differences, these two giant planets have more in common than previously thought." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 219.90.144.198 (talk) 18:19, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Ring Orbital Structure

Has anyone explained why the rings are perfectly circular, in an exact equatorial orbit, and don't display gravitational perturbations due to Saturn's other moons? Should be discussed. --Virgil H. Soule (talk) 13:38, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Earth In Background Of Saturn Eclipse Photo

In the photo showing Saturn in eclipse, the Earth is visible as a bright bluish star that appears to be between a couple of outer rings. I think it's important to point this out in the photo caption.Djcouture (talk) 18:44, 4 September 2009 (UTC)


saturns moons Mimas

Saturn has 34 moons. Mimas is one of Saturn's moons which almost split in half. Mimas was disvoered in 1789 by Wiliam Herschal.It has a large crater. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Melzy2022 (talk • contribs) 09:12, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Actually, Saturn has at least 61 moons. Wikipedia has an article about Mimas as well. --Patteroast (talk) 21:35, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Article locked

Um, why is this article locked for editing? Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia anyone can edit, unless you can't, in which case fuck off with your contributions, copyediting, and error corrections.

You can create an account and then edit this article. Ruslik_Zero 09:52, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
Why not unlock it? 216.99.219.165 (talk) 13:49, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Saturn's New Ring

Sources have found a new ring orbiting Satrun, it's 7.5 million miles wide, and was found by NASA's powerful infrared Spitzer telescope

Citation? [5] [6] [7]

If possible, I'd like to get this added in.

RaisusTheFlammie 11:34, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

It was already added in. Charvest (talk) 12:28, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
A recent newscast claimed the ring was so big it would look like it was as big as circumference of the Moon, if it could be viewed from the Earth. Can someone track down this statement? And is it true? If an observer on the surface of the Mars were able to see Saturn's new ring, would it be larger than the Moon is to us? 216.99.201.197 (talk) 00:42, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Equatorial Surface Gravity

From the given data, I calculate (6.67e-11 N m^2/kg^2)*(5.6846e26 kg)/(60,268e3 m)^2 = 10.4 m/s^2. How come the data says 8.96 m/s^2 instead? Inkan1969 (talk) 02:42, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

There are two additional circumstances:
  1. Saturn is not a sphere.
  2. It rotates.
Ruslik_Zero 04:11, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
Thanks. I forgot about the centripetal acceleration. Inkan1969 (talk) 17:57, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

the saturn fact sheet listed as a source lists both the gravity 10.44 and the acceleration 8.96. Why does this article omit the first value? 161.28.164.42 (talk) 03:34, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

I just fixed the equatorial surface gravity value according to [8]. The 8.96m/s² number is the total acceleration at the equatorial surface, not the partial acceleration caused by equatorial surface gravity. The Jupiter article also uses the partial acceleration value. Nevertheless, maybe it would make sense to have two entries, one called "g-force" (measured in multiples of g) and one called "acceleration at equator" (measured in m/s²) or something. Having both total acceleration and g-force under the heading "equatorial surface gravity" is misleading IMO.--GrafZahl (talk) 17:38, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Sidereal rotation period update

{{editsemiprotected} In physical characteristics, sidereal rotation period is listed as 10.57 days. It should read 10.57 hours. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 139.142.52.154 (talk) 00:00, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

It is not clear from the article exactly what the link with the god Saturn is.

The text says "The Greeks had made the outermost planet sacred to Kronos, and the Romans followed suit." Does this mean they believed the object in the sky *was* the god? Or simply that it was some kind of object to associate with the god? And has the name been used for the planet ever since the god was first referred to, or was it a later association?

SteveRwanda (talk) 18:21, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Spoken Wikipedia recording

I've just uploaded an audio recording of the article. Please let me know if I've mispronounced anything. :-) --Mangst (talk) 23:26, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Talk Page Vandalism

Why is it that this talk page has more vandalism than do most articles, and why is much of this vandalism particularly malicious, exemplified by this example here? RadicalTwo (talk) 22:16, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Well the use of expletives in vandalism is very common and this talk page is probably more of a target since the article itself is protected.--Giants27(Contribs|WP:CFL) 22:37, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
Is the use of expletives that common? Most vandalism I see is nonsense. Indeed, the worst I saw until today was this edit to Archaeopteryx. That said, I do agree on the fact that article protection leads to talk page vandalism. RadicalTwo (talk) 23:08, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
I think it might be the kinds of articles you're watching. That kind of childishly random insertion of expletives seems quite common in my experience. I've seen things go as far as occasional racial slurs in some of the articles I watch. --Patteroast (talk) 01:19, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
Racial slurs? Jesus...
Anyways, what exactly is special about the kind of articles that I am watching? (A complete list can be found on my user page.) RadicalTwo (talk) 01:33, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
Popular pages about basic topics seem to attract the most vandalism. I think that says something about the nature of the vandals.—RJH (talk) 16:31, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
—Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.239.33.220 (talk) 17:38, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

The link for "Oblate" under Physical Characteristics refer to the Oblate article as opposed to the Oblate spheroid article to which it should point. TheCleverFox (talk) 02:15, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Fixed.—RJH (talk) 18:56, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

The degree to which a planet is "flattened" is inversely proportionate to the square of its rotational period and linearly proportionate to its radius. Due to its large radius and short orbital [rotational] period (10.57 hours - 44% that of Earth), it is has the highest degree of flattening of any of the planets in the solar system. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.52.231.179 (talk) 00:11, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

That is a true statement, per:
Lowrie, William (1997). Fundamentals of geophysics. Cambridge University Press. p. 6. ISBN 0521467284.
It also has the lowest mean density.—RJH (talk) 18:54, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

cronian magnetosphere

The Magnetosphere section mentions the "cronian magnetosphere". Is "cronian" an alternative adjective for saturnian?—RJH (talk) 19:48, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it is. Ruslik_Zero 08:50, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
Ah, okay I see the connection. It comes from Kronos (alt. spelling Cronos). Thanks.—RJH (talk) 17:37, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

This alleged adjective is not used and is merely the invention of someone much more enthusiastic about language than astronomy. It should be removed from the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.40.241.161 (talk) 23:51, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

The adjective is used; just check google.—RJH (talk) 21:29, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

It is used but, to reduce confusion in the article, all terms alluding to Saturn should probably be mentioned at the start with the bulk of the article using just one of those terms exclusively. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.147.250.193 (talk) 17:54, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

WildBot

Note: I fixed the two broken section links reported by WildBot, but I did so by replacing them with links to redirects. This is considered an acceptable practice per WP:NOTBROKEN.—RJH (talk) 16:40, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Images

I think this article several images that are of a similar nature. For example, you have three images of the hexagonal polar cloud feature, two of which are animated and are therefore large downloads. There's also a gallery of images at the bottom (including an animation), which could just as easily be located on the Commons. (In fact there is already a Saturn gallery on the Commons.) The extra images effect download speeds, so I think it would be beneficial to do some trimming.—RJH (talk) 16:42, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, some trimming is required. Ruslik_Zero 19:20, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

It will get delisted (i.e. lose its FP status) if it's not used in any articles. Thanks. Papa Lima Whiskey (talk) 18:32, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Since the current lede pic is Dione with Saturn in the background (and a rather poor pic of Saturn at that), I'll use this for our article. Really, I think the first image in the article should be of the planet the article is about, and preferably a real pic rather than a montage. — kwami (talk) 07:17, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Spoken Wikipedia audio recording

I've updated the Spoken Wikipedia audio recording for this article. Please let me know if I've made any mistakes. Thanks. --Mangst (talk) 23:12, 10 October 2010 (UTC) Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest planet in the Solar System, after Jupiter. Saturn is named after the Roman god Saturn, equated to the Greek Cronus (the Titan father of Zeus), the Babylonian Ninurta and the Hindu Shani. Saturn's astronomical symbol (♄) represents the Roman god's sickle.

Saturn, along with Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune, is classified as a gas giant. Together, these four planets are sometimes referred to as the Jovian, meaning "Jupiter-like", planets. Saturn has an average radius about 9 times larger than the Earth's. While only 1/8 the average density of Earth, due to its larger volume, Saturn's mass is just over 95 times greater than Earth's.

Because of Saturn's large mass and resulting gravitation, the conditions produced on Saturn are extreme if compared to Earth. The interior of Saturn is probably composed of a core of iron, nickel, silicon and oxygen compounds, surrounded by a deep layer of metallic hydrogen, an intermediate layer of liquid hydrogen and liquid helium and finally, an outer gaseous layer.Electrical current within the metallic-hydrogen layer is thought to give rise to Saturn's planetary magnetic field, which is slightly weaker than Earth's magnetic field and approximately one-twentieth the strength of the field around Jupiter. The outer atmosphere is generally bland in appearance, although long-lived features can appear. Wind speeds on Saturn can reach 1,800 km/h, significantly faster than those on Jupiter.

Saturn has nine rings, consisting mostly of ice particles with a smaller amount of rocky debris and dust. Sixty-two known moons orbit the planet; fifty-three are officially named. This is not counting hundreds of "moonlets" within the rings. Titan, Saturn's largest and the Solar System's second largest moon (after Jupiter's Ganymede), is larger than the planet Mercury and is the only moon in the Solar System to possess a significant atmosphere —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.134.8.226 (talk) 10:53, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

In culture section

Any objections if I delete the whole "In culture" section? Nothing there seems worth including here; some of it is notable information, but it's not relevant here -- articles about those topics should link here instead. Comments? Mike Christie (talk) 00:16, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes I object. Better to improve it instead.—RJH (talk) 16:01, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

new picture

If copywright allows, this amazing picture should be in this article. I'm sure it could be found elsewhere:

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/technology-blog/nasa-cassini-orbiter-snaps-unbelievable-picture-saturn-144133480.html — Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.107.0.81 (talk) 14:31, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes it's pretty, but (per WP:IG) what does it illustrate that isn't already shown with the other images? Instead, I'd suggest adding it to the Commons. Regards, RJH (talk) 17:03, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Size of a what?

The article says the debris in the rings can be up to the "size of a small automobile". How big is a small automobile? Two meters? Four? Can we find a better description than this kind of Discovery Channel non-info? 178.147.33.106 (talk) 22:13, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Based upon the cited source, I changed the upper limit to say 10 m. Regards, RJH (talk) 20:13, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Number of rings

The intro states Saturn has 9 rings. Whilst I've seen some references to 9 rings, I've also read Saturn has 7 or 8 or 11 or thousands, etc. of rings. Would someone please rewrite this statement so that it is consistent with the information in the article on Saturn's rings. I would do it myself, but the article is protected. 101.109.95.224 (talk) 01:31, 12 September 2011 (UTC)mja

I clarified the introduction. Ruslik_Zero 11:40, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, that reads much better now. 101.109.87.171 (talk) 00:48, 13 September 2011 (UTC)mja

error

the titan father of Zeus is Kronos, not cronos check the first paragraph —Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.112.74.41 (talk) 22:56, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Hindu god Shani is not the equivalent of Greek Chronos. Shani is the Hindu god of misfortune and son of Sun god Surya. There is no sky god in Hindu mythology equivalent to Chronos. Shani has little significance in mythology compared to chronos (even though there are some references to Shani in some of the Puranas). Shani as the god of misfortune is a concept in Indian Astrology rather than Indian mythology. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.212.239.181 (talk) 05:49, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Multiple sources appear to indicate that Shani is associated with Saturn.[9][10][11] Please present some physical evidence to the contrary. Regards, RJH (talk) 16:28, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Magnetosphere

"...and slightly weaker than Earth's magnetic field." <- As far as I can tell this is not right and is contradicted by it's own citation. I'm just an astronomy student. Can someone who knows what's up fix this ASAP? MatthewVilter (talk) 22:06, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

PS: Even if this is right, I think it needs clarification. MatthewVilter (talk) 22:09, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Hello MatthewVilter. Yes there is something not quite right about either the statement or the reference. Going by the NASA fact sheets, the dipole magnetic field of Jupiter has a strength of 4.3 gauss;[12] that of Saturn is 0.2 gauss,[13] and the strength of the Earth's is 0.3 gauss.[14] Regards, RJH (talk) 16:06, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Hexagonal rotation

In my naîveté I nominated Saturn for Todays Featured Article. This seems to turn into a kind of Reassessment of FA worthiness. One thing that has cropped up is that some statements are not sourced. The first one I could find is: The entire structure rotates with a period of 10h 39m 24s, the same period as that of the planet's radio emissions, which is assumed to be equal to the period of rotation of Saturn's interior. The hexagonal feature does not shift in longitude like the other clouds in the visible atmosphere. In chapter North pole hexagonal cloud pattern. Anyone has a source for this? --Ettrig (talk) 07:14, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Above inaccurate characterization notwithstanding, please see here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:36, 2 December 2011 (UTC)
I've added several citations and will perform some cleanup and upkeep. RJH (talk)
I've added additional citations and made some additional changes to try and bring it more up to date. Some of the current references could probably be further supplemented with technical cites, but I think at this point I think I should leave it alone for the main page preparation. Regards, RJH (talk) 17:03, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, RJHall; could you keep WP:TFA/R apprised of your progress? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:13, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Will do, SandyGeorgia. Regards, RJH (talk) 17:14, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Sega Saturn

Although it seems likely to be true, I haven't been able to find a reliable source that confirms that the following statement is valid:

We can't just rely on assumption. Hence I moved the statement here until a suitable citation can be found. Regards, RJH (talk) 04:43, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

 Done Reference added.
Thanks. The reference says nothing about the logo, so I removed that part. Regards, RJH (talk) 14:55, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Internal structure unknown?

The article says: Though there is no direct information about Saturn's internal structure, it is thought that [by whom?] its interior is similar to that of Jupiter. I think it is too difficult for the readers to determine the probability that this speculation is true. It hints at indirect information. Is this only that Saturn is similar to Jupiter? How probable is that? Who thinks that? I am not able to follow the link. How do we know about Jupiter's interior? I have avague memory of a satellite probe. Is that it? See also WP:WEASEL. More speculation follows in the same paragraph. --Ettrig (talk) 15:54, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

I reworded it slightly. The Guillot et al (2009) paper (available for free on arXiv) gives a pretty good summary of the prevailing models. Regards, RJH (talk) 17:00, 3 December 2011 (UTC)
Yes, I got edit conflict when trying to do the same. It is still a weasel. --Ettrig (talk) 17:17, 3 December 2011 (UTC)
Why post here if you intended to address it? ;-) Well okay. I added a cite to the sentence so readers can look it up. My preference is to not clutter up the text with a long list of researchers who have performed the modelling. Regards, RJH (talk) 17:46, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Sorting the interior and the atmosphere

Interior structure is not only about structure, but also about temperature and the processes that presumably generate heat. It seems that the article mostly assumes that the atmosphere is not part of the interior. But there is information about the atmosphere in Interior structure. This distinction is also obscure because the transition between gas and liquid is assumed to be gradual. --Ettrig (talk) 17:15, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it's not like the Earth where there is a clear distinction between the atmosphere and the lithosphere. Some cross-over is probably inevitable. I look at the Atmosphere section as covering the part of the planet we can observe directly. With that in mind, the one paragraph where I think there may be an issue is concerning the abundance of elements heavier than helium. That really applies to the planet as a whole, rather than to the outer atmosphere. Regards, RJH (talk) 17:39, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Sourcing

This source was just added to the article,[15] and we had this source in the article previously. Both can improved upon (I doubt these are reliable or up to FA sourcing standards). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:43, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

I agree that's not a good looking source; all I did was fix the page extension. It was .php, and the old address said the site had been re-done and to use .aspx and it then redirected. All I did was fix a broken link. Sorry. Tycho Magnetic Anomaly-1 (talk) 01:15, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Comments on lead

This is a fairly long (juicy) article. The lead is supposed to be a succinct overview of the main article. I think it should be shortened as follows, possibly then lengthened again with a few important facts about Saturn. (A couple of minor edits have been made to adapt to the suggested loss.)

Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest planet in the Solar System, after Jupiter. Saturn is named after the Roman god Saturn, equated to the Greek Cronus (the Titan father of Zeus), the Babylonian Ninurta and the Hindu Shani. Saturn's astronomical symbol (♄) represents the Roman god's sickle.

Saturn, along with Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune, is a "Jupiter-like" gas giant. Together, these four planets are sometimes referred to as the Jovian planets, meaning "Jupiter-like". It has an average radius about 9 times larger than the Earth's.[7][8] While only 1/8 the average density of Earth, due to its larger volume, Saturn's mass is just over 95 times greater than Earth's.[9][10][11]

Because of Saturn's large mass and resulting gravitation, The conditions produced on Saturn are extreme if compared to Earth. The interior of Saturn is probably composed of a core of iron, nickel, silicon and oxygen compounds, surrounded by a deep layer of metallic hydrogen, an intermediate layer of liquid hydrogen and liquid helium and finally, an outer gaseous layer.[12] Electrical current within the metallic-hydrogen layer is thought to give rise to Saturn's planetary magnetic field, which is slightly weaker than Earth's and approximately one-twentieth the strength of Jupiter's.[13] The outer atmosphere is generally bland in appearance, although long-lived features can appear. Wind speeds on Saturn can reach 1,800 km/h, significantly faster than those on Jupiter.

Saturn has a ring system that is divided into nine continuous and three discontinuous main rings (arcs), consisting mostly of ice particles with a smaller amount of rocky debris and dust. Sixty-two[14] known moons orbit the planet; fifty-three are officially named. This does not include the hundreds of "moonlets" within the rings. Titan, Saturn's largest and the Solar System's second largest moon (after Jupiter's Ganymede), is larger than the planet Mercury and is the only moon in the Solar System to possess a significant atmosphere.[15]

--Ettrig (talk) 16:34, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Ettrig. I agree that the lead should be succinct. As it is the part of the article most likely to attract new, minor additions, it's somewhat natural for it to grow over time. Your edit suggestions make sense to me. Regards, RJH (talk) 17:19, 2 December 2011 (UTC)
I'm not sure what an "average radius" is, unless there is more than one radius being measured. 24.27.31.170 (talk) 03:27, 5 December 2011 (UTC) Eric
Averaged over the rough surface of the planet, which is not an ideal sphere. Materialscientist (talk) 03:30, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Query

The TFA blurb was proposed before you both began cleanup here-- did you make sure the blurb is synced with the article? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:16, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Didn't think of that. Agree in retrospect that that would have been common sense. sorry. Was surprised by the sudden success. The text in the queue is protected from my potential improvements. --Ettrig (talk) 17:27, 3 December 2011 (UTC)
That's why I tried to alert you that ya gotta be sure you're ready when you nom a winner at TFAR ... it's likely to go up very soon.  :) I'm not an admin, so I can't sync the blurb-- maybe ping in Casliber, who is an admin? The folks over at WP:ERRORS can be most unkind once the blurb hits the mainpage. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:36, 3 December 2011 (UTC)
I don't think it's a major issue. The information in the blurb is all covered by the article. Regards, RJH (talk)
OK, thanks, RJ! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:41, 3 December 2011 (UTC)
RJHall, you not an admin? Gawd, I thought you must have been one. Best use for tools is mucking around with deletions needed sometimes in pagemoves and semiprotections, and mainpage edits for DYK and TFA. I am sure a few of us (me, Sandy (?), some other people) would be happy to nom if you see a need for extra tools. Cheers. Casliber (talk · contribs) 22:10, 3 December 2011 (UTC)
Casliber: actually no, I declined because I just wanted to focusing on editing. Regards, RJH (talk) 18:09, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Cleanup

  • Images and captions-- my browser shows a Big Huge Horrible white space before the first image-- can you move it somewhere? Don't want to edit conflict while y'all are hard at work. Also, incomplete sentences in image captions need to have the final punctuation removed. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:47, 3 December 2011 (UTC)
    • The images appear to have been rearranged. Is it okay now? I must admit I don't feel very comfortable with that whole issue of removing periods from image captions. Perhaps somebody else could tackle that? Thanks. Regards, RJH (talk) 18:17, 3 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Why does this sentence need six citations?
  • A persisting hexagonal wave pattern around the north polar vortex in the atmosphere at about 78°N was first noted in the Voyager images.[44][45][46][47][48][49]
    • I really don't know. Perhaps editorial enthusiasm? Anyway I trimmed the list to two high-value cites. RJH (talk)
  • Prose puffery?
  • is the only moon in the Solar System to possess a significant atmosphere.[20]

Why use "possess" when we can say more simply, "only moon ... to have ... "

Changed to "retain", which is more accurate.
  • " ... with an average radius about 9 times larger ... " WP:MOSNUM, should be nine.
    Fixed.
  • See also, not sure that Wikibook belongs here at all, but if it does, it belongs in External links.
    • Removed.
  • I can't decipher what this sentence is trying to say:
  • The day Saturday is named after Saturn, which itself its derived from the Roman god of agriculture, Saturn, although it has been argued that Saturday is rather named after the Roman god Saturn also.
    • Yes that is confusing. I trimmed it and tried to clarify.
  • I don't know what a "magnitude between 1 and 0" is (links, definitions?) or why these two sentences are run together?
    • Saturn appears to the naked eye in the night sky as a bright, yellowish point of light whose magnitude is usually between +1 and 0 and takes approximately 29½ years to make a complete circuit of the ecliptic against the background constellations of the zodiac.
      Added link and split the sentence.

RJ, are any of the other astronomy editors available to help you two get this in shape in the next few hours, because I'm seeing a lot of work needed. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:00, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for identifying these issues, SandyGeorgia. I can check back during the day. Regards, RJH (talk) 18:11, 3 December 2011 (UTC)
Thanks (huge white space before first image is still there)-- that's all I've got time for, Christmas party preparations overdue. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:36, 3 December 2011 (UTC)
I haven't been able to reproduce the white space problem, either in IE or Firefox, so I'm not sure what to do about that. Sorry. RJH (talk) 18:53, 3 December 2011 (UTC)
Not to worry then .. if it's a problem for others when it's hits the mainpage, someone will fix it. Have fun! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:54, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Cleanup still needed

I'm still finding prose issues and overciting and MOS issues ... arrrgh, need to get this cleaned up ... is this a typo? I don't know what it means, and maybe "banded" was meant instead of "bland"?

  • The outer atmosphere is generally bland in appearance, ...

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:14, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

It's bland in the sense of "lacking strong features or characteristics". I.e. there's not a lot of contrast. RJH (talk)

No idea what to make of this:

  • Later, in March 2007, it was found that the rotation of the radio emissions did not trace the rotation of the planet, but rather is produced by convection of the plasma disc, which is dependent also on other factors besides the planet's rotation.
    • I've attempted to address this issue. RJH (talk)

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:17, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

I've done all I can quickly-- the prose is rough, and some text might need to be recovered from the version that was featured four years ago. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:26, 3 December 2011 (UTC)
Yes it's been four years; plenty of time for edits to damage the flow and quality. Perhaps older FA articles should go through a mandatory review period before they go on the front page? Thanks. Regards, RJH (talk) 23:36, 3 December 2011 (UTC)
It depends on whether any of the original editors are still involved (I've kept up the FAs I worked on over four years ago, but in this case, we knew the original editors were long gone.) At least it's running on a Sunday, which is the least trafficed mainpage day. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:55, 3 December 2011 (UTC)
I posted a note to the WP:ASTRO talk page. Thanks. Regards, RJH (talk) 23:57, 3 December 2011 (UTC)
Posted two days ago already;[16] must be FAC's fault that they don't seem to care. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:45, 4 December 2011 (UTC)
I've scanned through the article and I have to agree that the prose is far below standard (which it to be expected in a featured vital article four years after its nomination). Found a lot of instances of unrefined prose, some redundancy, and way too much vague wording. Some areas also show a heavy contrast in author's style (likely the result of multiple editors adding bits of content). I've tried tackling some of the issues like redundancy but I'm seeing way too many, and I'm not comfortable enough with the subject at matter to be making big prose-changing edits. Auree ★ 03:58, 4 December 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for doing what you could, Auree-- unless some of the astronomy folk show up this week to improve the prose and sourcing, or unless other editors improve it after mainpage day, a trip to WP:FAR may be warranted ... prose, sourcing, and I'm unsure on comprehensiveness. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:09, 4 December 2011 (UTC)
I agree it needs an overhaul. Regards, RJH (talk) 18:10, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Units

Why are all distance units either km or AU, with no miles? - Denimadept (talk) 07:02, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

I made a quick check in WP:UNIT and got the impression that this state of affairs is OK. --Ettrig (talk) 08:51, 4 December 2011 (UTC)
Because it's a science article, my understanding is the same as Ettrig's. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:06, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Whither the vortex?

The "Cloud layers" section says:

Infrared imaging has shown that Saturn's south pole has a warm polar vortex, the only known example of such a phenomenon in the Solar System.

The "North pole hexagonal cloud pattern" section says:

Unlike the north pole, HST imaging of the south polar region indicates the presence of a jet stream, but no strong polar vortex nor any hexagonal standing wave.

These appear to be mutually exclusive claims. Regards, RJH (talk) 23:17, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

"Ancient" Diameter of Saturn

I'm not sure the following should have a place in this article:

In the 5th century CE, the Indian astronomical text Surya Siddhanta estimated the diameter of Saturn as 73,882 miles, an error of less than 1% from the currently accepted value of 74,580 miles, for which there exist several possible explanations.

The citation is to a rather speculative article of dubious quality. The estimate hinges, for example, on assuming a particular conversion for a traditional unit. The hypothesis favored by the cited source is that "at some time in the past, ancient astronomers possessed realistic values for the diameters of the planets." The alternative explanations provided in the source are, in essence, that it is coincidence or fraud. The source then argues against each of these "alternative explanations."

Unless we think our article should present the largely unsupported concept of ancient advanced knowledge of planetary diameters, I propose this sentence be deleted. If there are no counterarguments within the next week, I shall make the deletion.

--SarahLawrence Scott (talk) 03:31, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

The sourced paper certainly does rely on a lot of supposition and conjecture. Is there anything of value we can take from the text of Surya Siddhanta itself? Regards, RJH (talk) 05:43, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Ancient observations of Saturn

It would probably be a good idea to mention old Chinese, Indian and other observations of Saturn. At the moment there is too much focus on European observations. Aberdeen01 (talk) 14:26, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Missions

The first mission to Saturn was Pioneer 11, set back in 1979. The next one is Voyager 1, in 1980. The Voyager 1 picture of Saturn looked more unclassy than Pioneer 11. A third one, Voyager 2, took a closeup picture of Saturn's rings in 1981. Not until =====23 years===== since the next space mission came to place. That was Cassini-Huygens in 2004-2005. The Cassini orbiter went to Saturn in 2008. (71.8.121.8) 14:59, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Orbital characteristics

Hello everyone, first time on WP in order to comment something. Sorry for not being logged in. I just want to know why the orbital parameters from this article about saturn are not the same as http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/saturnfact.html Just explain how do you find these parameters, essentially eccentricity and semi-major axis (parameters of the ellipse)

i know it seems not a big difference, but it is significant.

Thanks -- 134.157.242.237 (talk) 15:11, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

The NSSDC fact sheet uses an epoch of Julian Date 2451800.5 (13 September 2000) to define the changing orbital elements. Wikipedia uses an epoch of Julian date 2451545.0 TT (Terrestrial Time), or January 1, 2000, noon TT. -- Kheider (talk) 16:14, 15 May 2012 (UTC)
Is there a reference for this calculation (website, article)? Because it's hard to check, I didn't find by myself. I found some ephemerid for Righ Ascenscion and declination in (Archinal et al, 2011), but I didn't find for elliptical parameters.

Thanks -- 134.157.242.237 (talk) 16:42, 15 May 2012 (UTC)


You will see 2451545.000000000 = A.D. 2000-Jan-01 12:00, EC= 5.57232E-02, A (Semi-major axis) = 9.582
--Kheider (talk) 18:21, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks a lot Kheider. If I read correctly the references it explains how to do. I used HORIZON but not very good apparently. Thanks for your time.
134.157.242.237 (talk) 08:24, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Units - again

Why are speeds given in km/hr rather than ms-1? Firstly, this is a scientific article and the Wikipedia standard recommends SI units, that is (again according to Wikipedia) MKS units. More importantly, I feel, units such as mph, km/h, knots etc. are only really relevant to terrestrial transport. In this example of wind speed on Saturn (which I would guess from the value that the author converted from 500m/s), I and, I suspect, most people reading the article, can readily visualise a distance of 500m and an object blowing past. A second later it's gone that far! Whereas, "Imagine driving along at 1,800km/h and sticking your hand out of the window." somehow doesn't give the same feel.

Also, why not state very large distances in scientific notation? When coming to a subject like this for the first time I usually want one, or two at the most, digits of precision and an order of magnitude. Having to count digits and commas makes it more difficult to take in the information at a glance, although I admit that in this case AUs give me at least a far better feel for the scale.

Sorry, I've just read the cloud layers section, where m/s are used. However, I still think this gives a better feel for speed than km/h even in an introduction. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Chrisbaarry (talk • contribs) 01:15, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Well, km is an SI unit and hours are allowed per WP:UNITS and Non-SI units mentioned in the SI. Personally I have no issue with using km/h (or mph) for wind velocity since it is commonly used in news reporting and most people can directly relate to it. Finally, there is nothing at WP:NUMERAL that says large numbers must be listed using scientific notation. Personally I don't care either way, but many people prefer that large numbers with many digits of precision be typed out as a decimal number. Regards, RJH (talk) 16:57, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Picture of Saturn

Look at the picture of Saturn! Isn't it upside-down? Look at that picture upside down, and you'll see, that shadows and everything else becomes more logic...

178.250.39.103 (talk) 15:47, 4 June 2012 (UTC) User Pupicucek

The Sun is shining from the lower right. There really is no "upside down" in space. -- Kheider (talk) 16:51, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
No upside down for Earth, either... siafu (talk) 19:29, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Atmosphere

Heat from Saturn's interior compared to the cooler upper atmosphere produce strong jet streams that travel in opposing directions.

[16]

Sidelight12 (talk) 19:11, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

False Assertion?

I query the statement in the article that Saturday was named after the planet, rather than after Saturn the mythological deity. Neither of the given references support it. At all. D.C.Rigate (talk) 13:48, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

Magnetosphere

The article states that Saturn's magnetic field is slightly weaker than Earth's, but the reference [18] states it's approximately 580 times Earth's, and so does NASA's page about the planet. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.4.223.227 (talk) 15:26, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Way outside of my understanding but at the main article Magnetosphere of Saturn there is the statement:
The magnetic field strength at Saturn's equator is about 21 μT (0.21 G), which corresponds to a dipole magnetic moment of about 4.6 × 1018 T•m3.[2] This makes Saturn's magnetic field slightly weaker than Earth's; however, its magnetic moment is about 580 times larger.[1]
Does this help at all? I havent checked the ext sources yet on that. --RacerX11 Talk to meStalk me 15:39, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Ring rotation

Surprisingly, the article mentions absolutely nothing regarding the rotation of Saturn's rings. There is no content in regards to how fast the rings rotate around the planet. Or if there is a difference in speed between the rotation of the planet itself in comparison to the speed of the rotation of the rings. In fact, the reader can't even properly deduce whether the rings even rotate at all, or whether they remain stationary around the planet as the sphere rotates within it. Duranged (talk) 17:42, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Depending on their distance from the planet, the rings orbital speed will vary. Closer ring material rotates faster, outer ring material rotate slower. As for putting this information in the article, I think it best it be in Rings of Saturn than here. Reatlas (talk) 22:57, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
I was watching a documentary about it on the History Channel, and that fact is indeed correct. The inner rings revolve faster than the outer rings. The Ring rotations vary from between 20,000 to 40,000 mph. I just found it odd that it's not mentioned in either of those articles. It seems like a relatively important piece of information in relation to the subject matter. Duranged (talk) 4:44, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Polar Hurricanes

Mention should be made of the recently observed North Pole hurricane as well as the south pole hurricane. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.215.5.255 (talk) 16:33, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Ancient observations of Saturn

It would probably be a good idea to mention old Chinese, Indian and other observations of Saturn. At the moment there is too much focus on European observations. Also, the Babylonian astronomers saw Saturn and recorded its movement, I don't know much otherwise but that's pretty important.

  • The Babylonians are already mentioned in the article, but if you can find some reliable sources about the Chinese and Indians, why not add a couple of sentences about them? andy (talk) 08:52, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Saturn's Alleged Origin

There are several theories regarding the planet's formation. Please mention all of them including the theory that it was a dwarf star that cooled down.

Hotridge (talk) 06:40, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

--Gary Dee 18:45, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Excellent removal. The links are clearly malicious, So i Strongly agree with the removal of the source(s), Except Dailygalaxy.com, on second thought. is dailygalaxy.com really malicious?--Anderson I'm Willing To Help 21:40, 21 July 2013 (UTC) I'm now opposing the removal--Anderson I'm Willing To Help 01:52, 24 July 2013 (UTC).

 Comment: DailyGalaxy.com is not malicious.--Anderson I'm Willing To Help 21:19, 22 July 2013 (UTC)
 Comment: Some of these malware alerts are nothing more than suspicions that a bit of javascript might (or might not) be dodgy. For example http://sitecheck.sucuri.net/results/www.dailygalaxy.com seems to be objecting to the use of javascript to embed recaptcha in a page. For this reason I'm undoing the removal of Daily Galaxy. andy (talk) 21:51, 22 July 2013 (UTC)
 Comment: That, i must say, Is an excellent idea. I don't know if a malware scanner was used before the removal, but some of these malware alerts can, Indeed, raise suspicion.--Anderson I'm Willing To Help 23:08, 22 July 2013 (UTC)
Gary, What really annoys me is that now, I have to go through your contributions and restore that link across all those articles you removed them from. I think you should stay away from malicious link removal until you can properly identify malware.--Anderson I'm Willing To Help 01:57, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Saturn's moons

I sourced that Saturn has 62 moons and not 200. Anyone who disagrees with the change can leave a response here. Regards,--Anderson - What's up? 00:41, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

200 is if you count the moonlets. (But then what to do with S/2009 S 1?) Double sharp (talk) 11:01, 9 July 2013 (UTC)
I was counting the moons that had been confirmed to be orbiting Saturn.--Anderson - What's up? 20:42, 9 July 2013 (UTC)
Thing is, the moonlets are also verified. And it is certainly NOT true that Saturn just has 62 moons!! As you go down in size you have the moons, then the moonlets, then small ring particles. The moonlets are large enough to distinguish themselves from the ring material (although not enough to clear themselves a channel in them) and if you count them (which IMO you should) then you have at least 200 and probably many more. The dividing line is not clear anyway (vide S/2009 S 1, which is frankly more of a moonlet, yet has an official provisional designation and is one of the 62) and there is no real official demarcation. It's not so much of a problem with the other gas giants as the rings there aren't so dense. Double sharp (talk) 11:04, 10 July 2013 (UTC)
I did a search over the Internet and there is no source that there are 200 moons/moonlets.--Anderson - What's up? 20:55, 10 July 2013 (UTC)
I understand your view. Thing is, a few years ago I would have supported it myself :-). But it really doesn't provide a correct picture of the Saturnian system. Can understand your side from a Wiki-perspective, though. (Also, it's not 200, it's ≥ 200. There are lots of them. It depends on where you draw the line between what is a moonlet and what isn't. If you take 100 m as the cut-off there are over ten million, so 200 is indeed overly cautious! [17])
So, yeah, can understand our points of view on this. You're choosing the "safer" side Wiki-wise: these 62 are (nearly) universally counted as moons (S/2009 S 1 being slightly unclear). But OTOH, the status of some of those moons (well, just S/2009 S 1) is unclear and there is no formal dividing line between moons and moonlets, so 62 is quite disputable as a figure. I guess leaving it as 62 is really OK, but I still do prefer the old "> 200" figure. Double sharp (talk) 14:48, 11 July 2013 (UTC)
Wikipedia uses what has been published previously in reliable sources and if there are no sources showing the ">200" number then it would be original research to include in the article. - SudoGhost 15:17, 11 July 2013 (UTC)
I was trying to stick to wikipedia's no original research policy.--Anderson - What's up? 22:44, 11 July 2013 (UTC)
For a start, this is not even OR. If it's over 107, then it's over 200. If you're only willing to go by known moonlets, there's at least 150 of them (ref), and 150+62>200 (routine calculation, not OR). Double sharp (talk) 12:20, 12 July 2013 (UTC)
After carefully examining the reference, I will add it to the references section of the article, And cite and source there are 150 moons/Moonlets.Anderson I'm Willing To Help 20:12, 16 July 2013 (UTC)
I've referenced it, but i'm having a lot of trouble trying to cite it... I'll reply here once i've managed to cite that saturn has 150 moons/moonlets.Anderson I'm Willing To Help 00:40, 17 July 2013 (UTC)
I fixed your citation. Note that the cited paper was published in The Astronomical Journal, while the Cornell University Library, which you had in the citation, is merely the host of the arXiv site. Mojoworker (talk) 05:00, 19 July 2013 (UTC)
  • The way to address the issue over the number of moons/moonlets is to state in the article something such as "According to (source), there are (X number) of moons, while (source) suggests that there may be as many as (X number)". That said, it may not be efficient simply to rely on web sources - a trip to the library to view some recent publications may be the answer. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:52, 17 July 2013 (UTC)
  •  Comment: That's why i still agree with this NASA Source, Due to NASA sources being highly reliable.--Anderson I'm Willing To Help 02:54, 17 July 2013 (UTC)
Maybe it's about time we close this discussion. there have been no more posts in a week.--Anderson I'm Willing To Help 22:24, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

My 2¢: It's easy to ref 62 known moons w RS's. The article on the A-Ring "features" that interprets them as moonlets says that "a third of [the 150 features] are demonstrated to be persistent by their appearance in multiple images". In all other articles, we only count moons when their orbits have been well determined and they've been given formal designations. It's not clear how many of the third of the 150 qualify under that standard; only one has received an informal name, and AFAICT none have received formal designations. IMO, we should state that there are 62 moons with formal designations, and in addition innumerable undesignated moonlets within the rings. — kwami (talk) 22:40, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

I cited it using the NASA reference instead. Since that NASA source is the most accurate, I determined it would be the best one to use to cite the info on Saturn's moons.--Anderson I'm Willing To Help 21:38, 25 July 2013 (UTC)
If this article is to retain FA I would suggest that a common-sense inclusion of the moonlets is decided upon. I have mini-fixed a very misleading sentence at the intro of the satellites section. WP is an encyclopedia not a platform for putting forward fringe ideas on what should be classified as what. -- Nbound (talk) 12:31, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

It’s raining diamonds on Saturn

This was today in the news http://gizmodo.com/its-literally-raining-diamonds-on-saturn-and-jupiter-1445016533 I would add it but the page is protected. Kn1467 (talk) 00:12, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

A similar thing is said of Uranus on it's internal structure section, i will put it there. Kn1467 (talk) 02:36, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

  • Please don't! If you check your sources carefully you'll see that even the scientists who make this "claim" admit that it is speculative and unpolished - and therefore not peer reviewed. It's quite possibly wrong. And BTW I don't thing that Gizmodo or the BBC website count as reliable sources for planetary science! andy (talk) 09:57, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

The reference to a standing-wave in the section on the Hexagon should be a link to the standing wave article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mchaput (talk • contribs) 01:53, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

Prior content in this article duplicated one or more previously published sources. The material was copied from: here and here. Copied or closely paraphrased material has been rewritten or removed and must not be restored, unless it is duly released under a compatible license. (For more information, please see "using copyrighted works from others" if you are not the copyright holder of this material, or "donating copyrighted materials" if you are.) For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or published material; such additions will be deleted. Contributors may use copyrighted publications as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences or phrases. Accordingly, the material may be rewritten, but only if it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously, and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. While we appreciate contributions, we must require all contributors to understand and comply with these policies. Thank you. Diannaa (talk) 22:35, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Moons

How many moon are on it ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Qummar waheed 192 (talk • contribs) 05:27, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

Rotation period refined

An April 8, 2014 journal article has related the rotation period of Saturn's interior to that of its north polar hexagon, whose features are stable. The period they observe is several minutes longer than the latest estimate for the interior cited in Wikipedia's main article (ref 69). Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/04/140408074827.htm Stefanoaz (talk) 04:40, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

Frenkel line

The diagram of Saturn notes a "Frenkel line", but it is not mentioned in the article, nor is there an article about it. What is it? --JorisvS (talk) 15:17, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Frankel was the surname of a scientist who studied the divisions between layers of the atmosphere.
Nah I'm just kidding. I have no idea what that is. I searched for just "frankel" and it redirected me to an article about a race horse. That doesn't help much, I think Tetra quark (don't be shy) 23:35, 15 January 2015 (UTC)
It says "Frenkel", not "Frankel". Maybe that makes a difference? --JorisvS (talk) 10:35, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Saturn's Association with Indo-Chaldean-Semitic Gods

Mention should be made of the planet's association with Saturn's cube, the concept of Time and some ancient deities that are believed to be later versions of the same god associated with Saturn.

This is too general for an article about a planet. Perhaps your own web-site is the place for your ideas. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.98.54.153 (talk) 14:48, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

New lead image

Okay, I see now that TheWhistleGag's new lead image is actually higher-res than the old one. But it needs to be square-ish to fit the infobox in a pleasing way. TheWhistleGag, do you think you could upload a new version with black added above and below to make it a square? A2soup (talk) 20:48, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

I can and I did. — Preceding unsigned comment added by TheWhistleGag (talk • contribs) 21:10, 21 February 2015 (UTC)
I prefer the older picture. It was brighter and showed the full planet. This one is dark and shows half of it. What was the reason for the change, anyway? Tetra quark (talk) 21:21, 21 February 2015 (UTC)
Higher resolution, I suppose. I'm agnostic on this one, personally. I should let TheWhistleGag speak for themselves, though. A2soup (talk) 21:23, 21 February 2015 (UTC)
With the extra black, the newer one looks much better to me. --JorisvS (talk) 21:45, 21 February 2015 (UTC)
To be honest, the older picture is outdated; I like the newer one better, due to its higher quality and beauty. — Preceding unsigned comment added by TheWhistleGag (talk • contribs) 03:46, 22 February 2015 (UTC)
You can keep that lead image. Thanks! --Jcpag2012 (a.k.a. John Carlo) from Wikipedia 06:00, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 12 March 2015

104.235.175.212 (talk) 19:25, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format. NiciVampireHeart 19:32, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

Orbit and Rotation figure deleted

The average distance between Saturn and the Sun is over 1.4×109 km (9 AU). It takes Saturn 10,759 Earth days (or about 29+1⁄2 Earth years), to finish one revolution around the Sun.

I am going to delete the current figure (reproduced here for convenience), which seems to me to be rather uninformative. In particular, it lacks any useful explanation in the caption. I think the body with the heavy red line must be Jupiter, and the outer body Saturn, which seems to agree if the radial divisions are in AU. But then there is a strange body closer in, that seems to be at about 3.5 AU (? Ceres?) and one that may be the Earth closer still in that is difficult to make out. Anyhow, if someone can show that the figure has any pedagogic value and conveys something useful, please explain it and (maybe) restore it. A diagram from above (ecliptic pole, or from the normal to the fundamental plane of the Solar System -- defined by its total angular momentum) with the orbits of the six inner planets, might be somewhat informative, showing the relative distances and non-circularity of the orbits of Mercury and Mars, but not too relevant to Saturn. It is hard to get in Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto on a linear scale without much crowding of the inner planets, I think. Wwheaton (talk) 22:11, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

  • Beats me. I think that other body might be Mars, or maybe it's a pre-Velikosky solar system with everything in the wrong place. It certainly looks like there's a lot going on but it's not much use for navigating your flying saucer. Andyjsmith (talk) 23:01, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
    • I think the body with the heavy red line is Saturn (otherwise, what is it doing here?) and the outer one is Uranus. This would also agree pretty well with the scale, as the ratios are 1.96 (Uranus:Saturn) and ≈1.923 (Saturn:Jupiter) respectively. Then everything is in the right place, but the weird scale (one radial division isn't anywhere close to 1 AU) makes things unhelpful, along with the intense speed of the inner planets that makes the 1:291/2 comparison (Earth:Saturn) border on meaninglessness IMHO. Double sharp (talk) 10:49, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Rotation vs Winds speed

this is the data you can find in this page

planet radius at equator: 60268000 meters

winds max speed: 500 m/s

planet rotation at equator: ~10h



you can calculate the planet's circumference at equator (radius*2*pi) = 378675012 m


and the time the winds will take to make a full turn = 378675012 / 500 = 757350 seconds per turn

which is 210 hours.


Is there a problem with the data or am I just doing the calculations wrong?

Lessio (talk) 10:28, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Why should the wind speed have anything to do with the rotation speed of the planet? It certainly doesn't on Earth! ;-) The stated rotation period for Saturn is its internal rotation period, not the rotation period of the atmosphere. You can determine this from the rotation of Saturn's magnetic field. Double sharp (talk) 10:46, 7 April 2015 (UTC)


quoting what's written in the page:


System I has a period of 10 h 14 min 00 s (844.3°/d) and encompasses the Equatorial Zone, the South Equatorial Belt and the North Equatorial Belt.

All other Saturnian latitudes, excluding the north and south polar regions, are indicated as System II and have been assigned a rotation period of 10 h 38 min 25.4 s (810.76°/d).

The polar regions are considered to have rotation rates similar to System I.

System III refers to Saturn's internal rotation rate. Based on radio emissions from the planet in the period of the Voyager flybys, it has been assigned a rotation period of 10 h 39 min 22.4 s (810.8°/d).


I thought system I and II were talking about the atmosphere rotation and system III about the core

Lessio (talk) 11:26, 7 April 2015 (UTC)


I had time to check and it turns out wind speed is calculated relative to the planet rotation. so the 210 hours per rotation are the time clouds take to go around the planet and return over the same spot of the planet. and since the planet rotates every 10 hours the clouds rotate a bit faster than that.

Problem solved, If someone wants to add this to the main page I think it will avoid future doubts.

Lessio (talk) 11:18, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

It sounds like WP:OR or WP:Synthesis at best. I would not add it without a clear supporting reference. My 2 cents. Cheers, BatteryIncluded (talk) 20:48, 8 April 2015 (UTC)


This is why I didn't want to edit the article myself, I don't know if the source I've found can be considered valid. Anyone interested can find it here, hoping the link works.

Page 148 reads: "Without the value of Saturn's daily rotation, winds cannot be understood with certainty. But scientists are beginning to discern a pattern of winds throughout the outer Solar System. Winds are better understood for Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune, as each planet has an offset magnetosphere. Saturn's wind speeds are understood in a relative sense. [...] Currently, winds on saturn are still documented using the voyager data for saturn's lenght of day. [...] If analysts change their estimates of the lenght of saturn's rotation by just 3 min, the zero wind speed lines move up or down the scale by 40m/s. This is why scientists feel it is so important to understand what Saturn's true spin rate is." Lessio (talk) 11:42, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

inconsistent use of AU and au

The symbols AU and au were both in use to mean astronomical unit. I have corrected the inconsistency by harmonising on the international standard symbol au. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 08:52, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

"AU" is more common and clearer. --JorisvS (talk) 09:16, 14 June 2015 (UTC)
I agree AU is more common on WP, probably because the {convert} template only accepts that symbol (which is not a good reason!). Clarity is another matter. In what sense is it clearer to adopt a symbol that is not accepted by the IAU (has adopted au), by ISO (has adopted ua) nor by the SI (edition 8 of the SI brochure expressed a preference for ua; a recent update prefers au, following IAU)? Putting my question a different way, why is it considered better to depart from clear IAU advice? Dondervogel 2 (talk) 10:23, 14 June 2015 (UTC)
Not just more common on Wikipedia, despite such organizations opting for other forms. It's akin to WP:COMMONNAME, but applied to a unit. --JorisvS (talk) 10:31, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

Clarification on dating in the article

In the section "Natural Satellites", the image on the left hand side, showing formation of a new moon out of the ring of Saturn, has been dated 15th April, 2013, but the last paragraph of the same section refers to a NASA article dated 14th April, 2014. If the article referenced is to be relied upon, the date in the image is wrong, and needs to be changed. If the date in the image is not wrong (in a scenario where, say, the image was captured a year earlier, but it was not fully understood what was happening till 2014), then separate citation and further clarification is needed.Knaveknight (talk) 12:48, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

The image's page says it was taken by Cassini on 15 April 2013, and so does the reference in the text. 14 April 2014 is the publication date of this piece of information. --JorisvS (talk) 15:07, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 20 July 2015

There is a typo in the Planetary Rings section. Please change geyers -> geysers. No.0ne.057 (talk) 18:42, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Done and thanks Cannolis (talk) 19:04, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Observation section

I just did a bit of revising to the Observation section. It was a jumbled mess, confused "occultation" with "opposition", had sentences out of order, and treated some recent ephemeral data as if it were noteworthy, when in actuality it describes fairly common behaviour of Saturn. I removed the ephemeral stuff and rearranged/corrected the rest so that it made sense. People who don't know much about practical astronomy really ought to stay away from editing "observation" sections. — Preceding unsigned comment added by LoveCowboy2024 (talk • contribs) 6 June 2014‎

I don't want to add this as it may be seen as superfluous, but surely the line 'Saturn is the most distant of the five planets easily visible to the naked eye, the other four being Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter.' should actually say six planets, Earth is visible to the naked eye too. The line should either say 'visible from Earth', or include Earth in the list of those that are visible.94.8.24.204 (talk) 09:04, 9 October 2015 (UTC)  Done Isambard Kingdom (talk) 09:30, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 29 December 2015

Hi Guys, I have re-touched one of the images on the page to make it clearer and easier to visualize on the part of oppositions as observed from earth. Please see

File:Saturn-Rings-Tilting.gif
Saturn-Rings-Tilting

Saturn-Rings-Tilting

Best Regards, krindo

Krindo.matrix (talk) 01:24, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

 Done This request was not phrased in the correct "change x to y" format, but the intention was clear enough and I thought it was an improvement. A2soup (talk) 08:04, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 26 February 2016

Section 6: Natural satellites states "Saturn has at least 150 moons and moonlets, 53 of which have formal names." This is at variance with the main article, Moons of Saturn, which states " Saturn has 62 moons with confirmed orbits, 53 of which have names...", and with the NASA page http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/saturn, which states 62 moons, 9 awaiting confirmation.

One of the references for the 150 moons statement is a paper titled "The population of propellers in Saturn's A Ring". The abstract says "We present an extensive data set of ~150 localized features from Cassini images of Saturn's Ring A, a third of which are demonstrated to be persistent by their appearance in multiple images [...] We interpret these features as the signatures of small moonlets embedded within the ring..."

The author of the 'Natural satellites' section has apparently confused the "~150 localized features" statement in that paper, with confirmed moons; the paper itself says that only a third of those features are persistent.

I would suggest for internal consistency, matching the Moons of Saturn article.

175.45.116.61 (talk) 06:56, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

 Done (mostly) - Thanks for pointing this out! You are correct that Saturn has only 62 known moons, of which only 53 are named, and I have changed to article to reflect this as you suggested. The moonlets, however, should probably be included with a brief mention. I have done this now in a very rough way, in which the statement does not completely match the article cited (e.g. the article is only about the A ring, gives a more defined range than "dozens to hundreds"). More refs and better info can probably be imported from Rings of Saturn, likely enough to warrant a separate paragraph about moonlets in the "Natural satellites" section. I won't have time for this in the next few days, but hopefully I can return to finish it up later, or perhaps someone else can pick up the slack. A2soup (talk) 07:24, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 11 June 2016

In the section "Planetary Rings" The following paragraph should be significantly altered or removed entirely:

In the past, astronomers once thought the rings formed alongside the planet when it formed billions of years ago.[80] Instead, the age of these planetary rings is probably some hundreds of millions of years.[81]

Source [81] links to an official-looking, but entirely nonacademic article hosted on a creationist website (http://creationconcepts.org/) using the hypothesis of the early age of the rings to support creationism. Clearly this has no place in a scientific article.

Note, however, that there does exist uncertainty on the age of the ring system. Here is an academic article the supports a young age: http://arxiv.org/abs/1603.07071, and here is one discussing the old age: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/media/cassini20071212.html. I don't know which interpretation is most popular/accepted in the scientific community. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.90.214.117 (talk) 14:10 12 June 2016 (UTC))

Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format.  B E C K Y S A Y L E S  23:30, 13 June 2016 (UTC)

Seasons on Saturn

I wanted to look up future seasons on Saturn just now, in order to figure out when you can send a spacecraft to photograph an illuminated South pole of Enceladus - so in the Saturn's summer approximately.

I got these figures here, where someone has just calculated them and posted the figures to a forum, surprised that it's not in wikipedia and not found it anywhere else just searching now: http://www.cloudynights.com/topic/360680-solsticeequinox-dates-for-saturn/

"2009 AUG 10 – Vernal Equinox
2013 MAY 16 – Spring Cross-Quarter
2017 MAY 24 – Summer Solstice
2021 JUN 20 – Summer Cross-Quarter
2025 MAY 05 – Autumnal Equinox
2028 DEC 02 – Autumn Cross-Quarter
2032 APR 11 – Winter Solstice
2035 AUG 04 – Winter Cross-Quarter
2039 JAN 22 – Vernal Equinox"

I think the article should have a section on Seasons on Saturn - unless I'm missing it somehow? What do you think? Robert Walker (talk) 21:34, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

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Semi-protected edit request on 14 September 2017

Please change

pressure range 3–6 bar with temperatures of 290–235 K

to

pressure range 3–6 bar with temperatures of 190–235 K

This looks like an obvious mistake. The thick part of the atmosphere gets warmer with increased pressure.

Thanks!

Peter 84.227.38.187 (talk) 20:47, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

Done LiberatorG (talk) 22:07, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

Why is there no semi-protection on this article?

This article about Saturn, from what I have seen has been vandalized many times by IPs. And why was the protection removed in the first place?--Fucherastonmeym87 (talk) 16:03, 3 September 2017 (UTC)

I realize this question was asked a while ago, but for the sake of answering, administrators apply temporary protection in the majority of cases, which is why the protection was removed. Indefinite protection is only applied when an article has faced persistent, long-term vandalism, against which temporary protection is insufficient. According to the protection log, indefinite semi-protection is now in place since 13 September 2017. Mz7 (talk) 05:55, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 12 October 2017

I have an issue with the following paragraph:

On 8 January 2015, NASA reported that a team of scientists from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory determined the barycenter of the planet Saturn and its family of moons to within 4 km (2.5 mi) using data from an experiment conducted with the Cassini spacecraft and the Very Large Base Array.

Why do I have an issue with the preceding paragraph? Simple, it provides no information!

It's an announcement of a discovery without revealing what was discovered. It even provides the uncertainty of the value, but not the value. It's a tease. OzMaz (talk) 19:35, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format. SparklingPessimist Scream at me! 19:44, 12 October 2017 (UTC)
Look up barycenter. That's what was determined (not really "discovered"). It is not a static number- the barycenter's position changes with time depending on the position of Saturn's moons. CounterEarth (talk) 20:25, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

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Ring composition error

Hello, I would love to edit this page directly but it is locked. In the rings section a 2002 paper is cited indicating Saturn's rings are 93% water. On the wiki page dedicated to the rings[17], a 2008 paper is cited that uses Cassini data to peg the ring composition at 99.9% water. Please update the Saturn page to reflect the newer data. Thanks! Toastforbrekkie (talk) 19:42, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ (in English) C. A. Higgins, T. D. Carr, F. Reyes, W. B. Greenman, et G. R. Lebo. A redefinition of Jupiter’s rotation period. J. Geophys. Res., 102, 22033–22041, 1997 
  2. ^ (in English) M. D. Desch et M. L. Kaiser. Voyager measurement of the rotation period of Saturn’s magnetic field. Geophys. Res. Lett., 8, 253–256, 1981
  3. ^ (in English) P. Galopeau et A. Lecacheux. Variations of Saturn’s radio rotation period measured at kilometer wavelengths. J. Geophys. Res., 105, 13089–13102, 2000 
  4. ^ (in English) P. Galopeau, P. Zarka, et D. Le Quéau. Source location of Saturn’s kilometric radiation: The Kelvin-Helmholtz instability hypothesis. J. Geophys. Res., 100, 26397–26410, 1995 
  5. ^ (in English) M. D. Desch. Evidence for solar wind control of Saturn radio emission. J. Geophys. Res., 87, 4549–4554, 1982
  6. ^ (in English) B. Cecconi et P. Zarka, Model of a variable radio period for Saturn, J. Geophys. Res, 110, A12203, 2005 
  7. ^ Brainerd, Jerome James (November 24, 2004). "Characteristics of Saturn". The Astrophysics Spectator. Archived from the original on 2011-10-05. Retrieved 2010-07-05. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  8. ^ "General Information About Saturn". Scienceray. July 28, 2011. Archived from the original on 2011-10-05. Retrieved 2011-08-17. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  9. ^ Brainerd, Jerome James (October 6, 2004). "Solar System Planets Compared to Earth". The Astrophysics Spectator. Archived from the original on 2011-10-05. Retrieved 2010-07-05. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  10. ^ Dunbar, Brian (2007-11-29). "NASA – Saturn". NASA. Archived from the original on 2011-10-05. Retrieved 2011-07-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  11. ^ Fraser Cain. Mass of Saturn. Universe Today. 3 July 2008. Retrieved 17 August 2011. Archived October 6, 2011, at WebCite
  12. ^ Brainerd, Jerome James (October 27, 2004). "Giant Gaseous Planets". The Astrophysics Spectator. Archived from the original on 2011-10-05. Retrieved 2010-07-05. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  13. ^ Cite error: The named reference mag was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  14. ^ Piazza, Enrico. "Saturn's Moons". Cassini, Equinox Mission. JPL NASA. Archived from the original on 2011-10-05. Retrieved 2010-06-22. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  15. ^ Munsell, Kirk (April 6, 2005). "The Story of Saturn". NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory; California Institute of Technology. Archived from the original on 2011-08-22. Retrieved 2007-07-07. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  16. ^ NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory (2012). Cassini Shows Why Jet Streams Cross-Cut Saturn. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/whycassini/cassini20120625.html
  17. ^ https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Rings_of_Saturn#Physical_characteristics
I looked at the paper and it appears that the source for the 99% water ice is from Grossman (1990) and earlier. The only conclusion I'm seeing the authors of this paper make is that less than 2% of certain contaminants are needed to reproduce the spectrum. However, the data in this article appears to be misusing Poulet and Cuzzi (2008) because the 93% is talking about the grain types, not the actual abundances. Praemonitus (talk) 21:04, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 27 May 2018

It is found that the main cause of hexagon's stability is due to strong North Polar Vortex (NPV) that stabilizes the hexagon [1]. Ariel2108 (talk) 06:33, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ Masoud Rostami, Vladimir Zeitlin, Aymeric Spiga, On the dynamical nature of Saturn’s North Polar hexagon, Icarus, Volume 297, 2017, Pages 59-70, ISSN 0019-1035, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.icarus.2017.06.006.
 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. — JJMC89 (T·C) 07:28, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

In sidebar, synodic period shows same popup as orbital period. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.133.13.222 (talk) 15:08, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

That is because both are described on the same page. Double sharp (talk) 11:27, 26 July 2018 (UTC)

Updated magnitude range

The new values of brightest and faintest apparent magnitude in the ‘infobox’ were reported in a peer-reviewed journal article that includes updated equations for computing planetary magnitudes. Those formulas will be used to predict magnitudes for future issues of The Astronomical Almanac published by the U.S. Naval Observatory and Her Majesty’s Nautical Almanac Office. The equations were solved at daily intervals over long periods of time in order to determine the magnitude extremes. As noted in the journal article, the apparent brightness of Saturn depends very strongly on the inclination of its rings system. The extreme magnitudes reported here take that angle into account. The paper in Astronomy and Computing can be located at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ascom.2018.08.002. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Planet photometry (talk • contribs) 14:38, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

What a mess.

This article is awful. There are too many things wrong with it to describe here. The discussion of the planet's oblateness implies that only the gas giants are oblate. The box gives a single value for rotation rate when 1) it doesn't have a surface and 2) the rotation varies over a continuum of rates. The article talks about gravity without explanation of why the core (which IS solid) doesn't have a surface or if it does (I have no idea what the transition region between liquid and solid is like, whether it is a more or less discrete phase boundary or whether the transition is more gradual (or chaotic))) why that boundary isn't considered to be "the" planet's surface. Worse, it mentions the "gravity" at the equator is if that has its normal Earth surface meaning (i.e. approximately constant) rather than at a distance (arbitrarily at the theoretical distance where atmospheric pressure is guessed to average 1 atm.) from the barycenter determined by crude modeling. And it gives a value for the gravitational acceleration as if it is a constant (like Earth's). The section on the atmosphere claims its composition is similar to the primordial solar system's and goes on to state:"The total mass of these heavier elements [the astronomical metals] is estimated to be 19–31 times the mass of the Earth, with a significant fraction located in Saturn's core region." What has this to do with its Atmosphere??? I could go on and on. Needs a rewrite.72.16.99.93 (talk) 09:06, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

Fix it and add reliable references. Cheers, Rowan Forest (talk) 14:54, 19 January 2019 (UTC)
Mmm, no. It's a good article, but can always be improved. If you think you can do better then do so. Just remember, this is an encyclopedia so we don't make up information like whether or not there's a surface. Praemonitus (talk) 21:46, 19 January 2019 (UTC)
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